When beer and wine went on sale in the supermarkets 30 years ago, campaigners argued it made a harmful drug convenient. The Medical Association is still arguing that.

"We know it causes harm and it causes harm for what you might call a lot of people with ordinary diseases. We think of trauma; we think of cirrhosis of the liver. What we don't necessarily think of is high blood pressure, strokes, breast cancer - all have a component caused by alcohol," says Dr Alastair Humphrey from the New Zealand Medical Association.

Campaigners say booze should be treated as an abnormal commodity.

"It normalises it, as if it's your bread and your milk. In fact it's New Zealand's most harmful drug in society - more than methamphetamine, more than heroin, more than tobacco. We don't want this in our supermarkets," says Dr Nicki Jackson from Alcohol Healthwatch.